Eyes of starlight captured a dying summer wind plucking at the tips of each wave, seafoam kisses reaching up to lick at what little feathering dressed his hooves and the trim of hair cloaking his coronets. The sand was plush and damp this afternoon due the colder weather and the disappearing of the sun sooner in the day - it was a strange feeling to him now, to feel sand and seaweed to cold underfoot, but it was a welcome one after such a seering sumer.
What brought Damascus to the seaside was a wish for fish - they were the colt's favorite animal and he so loved to watch them swim in the bluer shallows of the Terminus where Night and Dusk bordered into Ruris. It was there that rivers met the sea and the water was it's purest; all manner of sealife roamed the confused and bustling waters of the delta.
With his goliath of a tail Damascus trudged his way from the river bank to the blue sea's shore, looking donw into the crystalline water to view a crab scuttling below the surface in an attempt to hide from his worrisome shadow. "Stops!" Damascus commanded of the crab, stomping his hoof into the sand "Friend of yours be myself" he wished to assure the strange sea creature as it continued to scuttle away to the safety of nearby rock pools.
Dohv had clambered down long ago and was skipping along the beach sand with a number of interesting shells in hand - Shells were of great interest to Damascus, particularly the spirally ones and the ones that made the home for tiny crabs. For a few day Damascus had even managed to keep one in his nest in the dusk court grounds, only to find him missing one morning...
The beach called to the girl like it did to most; its wide, open horizon, leading out over an endless canvas of blue on blue, filled her with a sense of smallness that was actually comforting, rather than frightening. It was an odd comfort – like how the cold seeping in through a window into a well warmed house can feel just right, despite it being the one thing you were seemingly trying to avoid, being inside in the first place.
She left the hills, crags, and wallows of the Dusk realm to her back, meandering for a day through a forest that was beautiful, but not the same as those at home, and awoke that morning to find herself still full of the vigor that called for adventure. So, she’d arrived on the beach, her pale green gaze falling upon the bob and ripple of the sea against the silky blue of the sky with the same delight and wonder she always looked upon it with. Now, however, there is also the small wonder, the tiniest fragment of hope: was what remained of Helovia somewhere, touching this sea? Or, at the very least, was her family somewhere in this world, someplace, where they might stand on a beach at the same time, staring at this very same ocean, beneath this very same sun?
She doesn’t get to linger in the radiance of her youthful hope long. A rather familiar jerboa is hopping up and down the beach, his tiny arms laden with, what Maude assumes, anyway, are shells and stones. She herself is the sort to do just that, but without her magical cloak, the girl finds she collects less often than she used to. It was hard to keep all the treasures you found without endless pockets, after all, and the girl was both materially minded and sensitive; it hurt her to leave what pretty things she found in this world behind.
Lifting her head and ears to search for the tall boy who was surely nearby, it doesn’t take her long to find him; trotting down the slight hillside towards the delta Damascus stands in, the maiden nickers hello, her tail slightly lifted to allow its long length to not become ensnared in the grass as she approaches.
"Hey Damascus!" she greets of her first Novus friend, truly glad to see him again, "what are you doing over there?"
Pausing alongside him and peering down into the water, the often all too oblivious girl doesn’t see the crab at all – but does see algae and sea moss, as well as a few larger shells. Wondering if that algae is the same as the sort of algae back in Helovia, the youth resists the temptation to taste it and see, instead continuing her visual investigation of the shallows.
The brute swivelled his giant head to face the familiar voice as a volley of hooves crossed the sand to meet him by the water's edge, his slightly slower brain taking a moment or two to process the youngster's name. Maude - the crying one who today wept no more. "Maude!" Damascus chirped boyishly, starry eyes oogling over the darling female. While he did stare ever so slightly, it was only out of happiness that she had arrived (and, perhaps, that he wished to admire her figure and see if she did the same in return),
"Watching of fishes I be doing" he would then explain after she quizzed him on what had drawn him out to the seaside. "Looks" he would then instruct, Stretching his nose as far as it could go and angling his eyes down upon slinking school of tiny bait fish. "Baby ones".
The jerboa had by now taken up most of his energy traversing the length of Damascus's tail until he reached it's crest, giving a cough and splutter upon reaching his destination on Damascus's spine, though upon realising he had left the collection of shells at the bottom of the climb he gave a squeak of despair. This went almost totally unheard by Damascus who once against was staring at Maude through silver eyes.
The tall boy greets her cheerfully, and Maude smiles at him briefly, before returning her attention to the water. She doesn’t notice, at least, not at first, that the boy’s eyes linger on her for longer than hers do his. Certainly the sort of girl to create poems about love any chance she got, the maiden was not yet one who understood that which she sang about incessantly. Naïve to the entire ordeal of physical attraction, having not yet beholden anyone who inspired such lustful thoughts from her, the girl simply notices whether or not someone else is handsome or graceful. She doesn’t yet notice the seductive rippling of sinew on the bodies of the warriors she meets and knows, the soft sweep of a man’s smirk across his rugged face, or how very, very soft those lips could feel against the curve of her neck.
Oblivious, the youth blissfully watches the water, unaware, as she has always been, of yet another male friend’s affections.
As they begin to talk about the sea, however, something nags at the girl – her sixth sense, if you will – and she again looks back towards the handsome, young warrior. This time, she does notice his stare, though doesn’t classify it as one. Instead, she feels her chest tighten oddly, and her belly does an odd flop, very similar to the one Kianzo had inspired long ago, during a herd meeting, looking at her much the same way which Damascus does now. The smile that comes to her features now is different than the easy one she’d first arrived with: lopsided, hesitant, and curious.
The shimmer of fish draws her gaze back down to the water, however, if Damascus’ muzzle gesturing to them all wasn’t enough of a reason, and a small gasp of excitement bubbles from her mouth.
"Oh, look! There are tiny little fish!" she breathlessly exclaims; only now noticing the rock crab that had initially drawn Damascus here to begin with, the girl more fervently squeaks, "ohhhh my gosh, and a crab!"
Her enthusiasm over the crustacean, unfortunately, sends the silvery fish scattering into the deeper parts of the water, away from where Maude’s loud voice booms some inches above the surface of their shallows. Laughing at her folly, the doe looks back at Damascus with a full grin, which flutters and flickers oddly when she finds his mercurial gaze pinned whole heartedly upon her still. Suddenly nervous (and unsure why), her smile slips away, slightly, and her green eyes glisten with anxious curiosity.
"Oops… they’ll come back, I hope?" she asks, doing her best not to abruptly blurt out an inquiry as to why Damascus was staring at her (did she have some mud on her face or something?).
Her laugh, her smile; it was all so much more beautiful than his own but it was observed without any jealousy - purely with adoration. This eyes of silved glanced once more upon her salty wet feet, trailing his gaze up her lithe legs, the pearlescend skin of her shoulder and the muscles in her neck, her throat, her eyes! Damascus had hardly noticed his jaw had fell apart, the lower half having slunk open in a daze. When he did notice how he stood gawking, he picked his chin from where it lay upon the floor and straightened his neck. "Goodness feeling giving me you do Maude" Damascus admitted, cheeks swelling as he pulled his chin to his chest in a vibrant blush. Why did that feel so embarrassing!? He had never expected in a thousand years that paying someone a compliment would make him feel so unworthy, yet so hopeful that she might feel the same.
Dohv, who by now had slapped the palm of his paw against his round skull was hopping back up his companion's neck to stand between the giant's ears, peering down at Maude with a slightly apologetic expression. Damascus lingered, waiting for her response and not caring at all for the frightened fish and crabs - they would come back later, and there was plenty more fish in the sea. He liked this fish.
If Maude was the sort to notice ones physical aspects over who they actually were when they used those physical parts to bring their soul into clearer view, she might have run her eyes over Damascus, as he did her. He was strong, a warrior boy, who marched and forayed, and his body was already toned and taught with muscles that would only grow more robust, if fate allowed his venture to continue onwards in the path it hurried into now. His silver eyes shone with a curious intelligence, perhaps not as great as some others in this universe, but enough that, when Maude met them with her own, pale green ones, something in her stirred, as if inspired by the image which met her, though without true understanding as to why.
She meets his gaze now, looking up from the pool to find him staring open mouthed and seemingly lost in some time or space beyond either of them. The naïve maiden smiles shyly at him, unsure what to say or do, even after his words cross the short distance between them, interspersed by the soft, ever present ebb and flow of the sea.
Not all together having to do with his strange manner of speaking, the girl replays and reorders his words, struggling to figure out what he’d meant, even after she’s pretty sure she knows what he said. Glancing up at Dohv, feeling entirely foolish, the maiden, too, feels a blush rise to her cheeks and across her breast, before she returns her spring meadow eyes to Damascus’ star-bright silvers.
"You make me feel happy too, Damascus," decides Maude, wondering – for the first time in all this awkward exchange – if her friend was maybe insinuating that he liked her. Liked her liked her, like how a knight likes a fair maiden, watching his tournament. Damascus, however, had not offered her any boon, and so the girl was divided in her ultimate determination of precisely what “goodness” she inspired in the heart of the handsome black youth. Her heart begins to flutter much, much faster than it had moments before, but not in an entirely unpleasant way, like it did when she was afraid. It was more like running and singing: as if every ounce of oxygen in her body was being used, and each breath all the more intensely satisfying for it.
Why couldn’t he have just kept talking about the fish? She nervously wonders to herself, still holding Damascus’ eyes with her own (unless he looks away), the sea breeze gently tousling her lengthy curls across her brow, and the sweep of her shoulders.
New vously he watched and waited, piercing eyes never leaving hers until she gave him a response. A panting burst of joyful air escaped his lips, soon to be closed with a blush and a shy grin - did he actually bring her joy too? Or was she just returning the compliment? The joy that filled his heart began to fade as concern, doubt and fear gripped at the ledges surrounding it and began to scratch it's icy nails over his throbbing chest.
While his smile had faded, his kindling feelings for Maude had not. Still he wished to impress her and show her all the wonderful things could do - he only hoped that in return she would teach him about her own self.
"Doing you what Maude when you spare time having?" he pondered, questioning her on her interests. Did she like flowers, or was she the kind of female to appreciate other kinds of nature (or none at all)? "Favorite colours be which to you?" he then questioned, silver eyes switching from the ocean to the crab now scuttling once again beneath the waves.
"This Dohv"
The jerboa was peering down at the doe by now, a paw outstretched toward her growing antlers and the shiny pearls that clung to them. Damascus had never seen pearls before, but they reminded him of the stars and many of the things that were glittery and precious to him. "He be a mouse". Dohv was not a mouse, but Dohv didn't know that - and he was close enough.
The conversation had suddenly changed, to such a drastic degree that even Maude the oblivious took note of Damascus’ suddenly tense but excited nature. The girl does best to not grow anxious herself; tearing her eyes from the fervent ball of tense energy that is Damascus, she looks back into the pool and watches the path of the scurrying crab. Behind her seemingly calm expression, however, that pace of her heart builds regardless, so that her citrine eyes travel to and from the crab to the colt with rapid exchange; her mind hurries from one question to another, all while wondering what came next. What was she supposed to do?
The songs and stories never included this part of the relationship!
Within seconds, Maude’s plan to maintain her cool falls into shambles, to such a degree that when Damascus asks her what she likes to do, the girl finds herself immediately blurting answers, rather than pretending to be the coy damsel she imagined herself to be
in all her daydreams.
"Well, I write songs sometimes, but they’re not very good. And, back home…" as usual, her voice emotionally wavers at the mention of Helovia, but with only a slight pause, she manages to regain her composure, and carries on, "I kept the greenhouse, with the others. I admit I haven’t practiced much since, though."
As for her favorite color, the girl sings a wonderer’s hum before she comes up with an answer to that, as well.
"I suppose its green, or blue, or anything between both. It’s hard to pick just one color – there are so many," she smiles, "what about you, Damascus?"
Smiling even wider and looking at the jerboa with avid interest as his small paw extends towards her pearls, it takes the youth a moment to register what the “mouse” desires; stepping a pace forward to allow the creature to touch the strand at will, the girl can’t help but wonder (especially now that she’s a bit closer) if Dohv really is a mouse, as Damascus claimed. He certainly didn’t look like the creatures that would scurry about in the herb storage areas back in the Edge, hoping to steal dropped seeds.
"Hello Dohv," says the maiden, glancing at the young stud (who’s face was awfully close, she notices, with a hard flutter of her heart against her chest) with a gentle smile, before she looks back at the mouse-like creature, "you have very impressive ears for a mouse."
